Friday, 16 May 2014

House of Silence by Linda Gillard

What we thought: Lead character, Gwen Rowland is invited to spend Christmas at her boyfriend Alfie's family home, Creake Hall, a neglected Tudor manor in Norfolk, with the strange family he seems desperate to keep her apart from. It’s not long before Gwen feels things are not as they seem, but can’t put her finger on the problem. Alfie acts strangely toward his family and is reluctant to talk about the past, something that’s important to Gwen because of her own childhood. As Gwen begins to piece together the complex family history, including Alfie’s role as a fictional character in his mother’s children’s books, she feels more and more out of her depth and turns to the brooding Polish gardener, Marek, for support.

There’s a haunting quality to this book, not quite ghostly, and yet quite ethereal – and it’s quite difficult to pinpoint down to one genre. There’s a mix of mystery and romance and yet, I had a feeling that Creake Hall was surrounded by ghosts – but living ones, not yet dead. Gillard creates some superb characters here, complex and damaged in so many different ways, and yet all totally believable.

I also loved the twists and turns as the plot unravelled, feeling confident for one moment that you knew where the story was headed, only to be disarmed and taken in an opposite direction. There was something about this novel that reminded me of two classics, Rebecca and Wuthering Heights, and it left me with that same disorientation, that although everything had been settled and all questions answered, there was still an element of the unknown left dangling.

This was the first book I’d read by this author, and I very much look forward to making my way through her catalogue of novels.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Top 1% Reviewer

Sign up for our free weekly roundup of book recommendations

If you love good books, you've come to the right place. Pull up a chair and browse our review recommendations. Each week we send out a new selection of reviews, with suggestions of why you might enjoy a book, why you might not, and what might be an ideal accompaniment.

If you would like to submit a book for review, please email submissions@quinnpublications.co.uk. Although we cannot review all books submitted, we'll do our best to get back to you.

To promote a book, please post on our Facebook page or tag us on Twitter @bookmuseuk.

Bookmuse Recommended Read

We believe in only reviewing and recommending books we love, therefore all books featured on our site carry the Bookmuse Recommended Read Badge

No part of this website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied, modified or adapted, without the prior written consent of the author, unless otherwise indicated for stand-alone materials. All opinions expressed on Bookmuse are the sole opinion of the contributor and not that of Bookmuse as a whole.

You may share this website by any of the following means:

1. Using any of the share icons at the bottom of each page (Google Mail, Blogger, Twitter, Facebook, GoogleBuzz) etc;

2. Providing a back-link or the URL of the content you wish to disseminate; and

3. You may quote extracts from the website with attribution to [www.bookmuse.co.uk]

For any other mode of sharing, please contact editor@quinnpublications.co.uk

Commercial use and distribution of the contents of the website is not allowed without express and prior written consent of the author.